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Our Mindfulness Matters (M&M) Kids Group

Time sure flies when you’re having fun—and being mindful! On April 3rd, 2014 we will be wrapping up our first round of Mindfulness Matters (M&M), a psycho-educational group for kids between the ages of 6 and 8-years of age that teaches brain basics and creative techniques to help us stay mindful.

Over the past eight weeks, we’ve had a wonderful time exploring the brain, in particular the amygdale (the security guard), the prefrontal cortex (the thinking and learning centre), and the hippocampus (the storage vault of learning and memory). We learned about how these different parts of the brain respond to stress and ways to calm ourselves so that we can think more clearly and stay in control of our reactions. We practiced mindful breathing or “belly breathing” to help us relax our bodies and calm our minds. We also learned about mindful smelling and how catching a whiff of a particular scent can help us remember events and situations in our memory banks. We spent a lot of time appreciating and enjoying different foods by slowing down and learning how to eat mindfully—fully appreciating the smell, texture, and taste. To help us become more relaxed and grounded, our M&M group went on mini vacations in our minds through guided meditations. We also learned and practiced the importance of gratitude and kindness to help us become more optimistic by appreciating other people and the larger world around us.

The M&M group is loosely based on the MindUP curriculum, a program created to teach students brain-focused strategies for learning and living. You can learn more about the curriculum by following this link to MindUp.

If you’d like to learn more about mindfulness in general, you can watch this video clip of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

We will be starting another round of M&M starting on May 6th, 2014. If you are interested in learning more about the group, please contact Maggie Cox at our office 604-309-0268.